{"id":81,"date":"2023-03-09T04:18:30","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T09:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/?p=81"},"modified":"2023-03-09T04:18:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T09:18:30","slug":"march-8-fabra-i-coats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/2023\/03\/09\/march-8-fabra-i-coats\/","title":{"rendered":"March 8: Fabra i Coats"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Another fantastic day in beautiful Barcelona! Today the group had the opportunity to visit Fabra i Coats, Creation Factory – an old thread and textile factory turned culture center \/ space for artistic creation across multiple disciplines. One of 11 sites throughout Barcelona, Fabra is owned by the City Council intending the site solely for cultural use.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The factory is described as “An ecosystem in which artists and groups from various disciplines can develop their activity and find support.”\u00a0 You can imagine how enticing this must sound to a group of artists from Boston. We were greeted by Mariana, an artist and staff member at the factory who provided us with the history of Fabra i Coats and took us through this iconic building. Fabra is located within an old textile factory from the start of the 20th century which used to produce threads and fabrics for sewing goods – which became a big part of the Catalan culture.\u00a0 Because of this, when renovating the factory, Fabra i Coats kept elements of the factory to remain – think wide open spaces, thick steel columns. We were reminded again during this trip of how important culture is to the Catalan people, and how they insist on preserving their rich history and heritage and infuse it into the next phase of a building’s life. Now in the 21st century, the factory has turned into a Creation Factory for artists. Mariana explained to us that the City Council reviews artist submissions to grant free access to the creative spaces for them to brainstorm ideas, conduct research, develop their work, rehearse, and make connections with other artists or collaborators to jump start their careers. You mean they don’t have to pay by the hour? They don’t have to fight over practice rooms? This seems too good to be true! The length of time artists have to work on their projects can be from one month to one year. Our tour through the factory brought us through large open rehearsal spaces, used for dance or theater performance. As we walked the halls of the factory I couldn’t help but peek into the windows of some of the rehearsal spaces. There was a drummer in headphones practicing keeping time. Another room had a pianist plunking out notes until she got it right. There were even some people recording a podcast I noticed in another studio on our way out. Perhaps my favorite bit of knowledge from Mariana: Catalan artist now famous in the states and a personal favorite of mine, Rosal\u00eda, rehearsed a performance in the very room we were standing in! Cut to me listening to “Milion\u00e0ria” as I write this post.<\/span><\/p>\n

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After our tour and we bid farewell to Mariana, we met with staff member and Fabra i Coats artist M\u00f3nica Muntaner, founder of La Poderosa, an all female-led space accessible to the dance and performing arts community. Monica spoke about her work and her residency at the factory. She spoke about supporting and welcoming emerging artists to cultivate their work and how La Poderosa is a space for growth – growth for the artist, for the work, for the community, and building a connection between artists and the public. As an artist myself I was enamored with her vision and belief in the importance of being an artist and the influence and connection you can and do have with your home, culture and the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Author: Peter Romagna<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another fantastic day in beautiful Barcelona! Today the group had the opportunity to visit Fabra i Coats, Creation Factory – an old thread and textile factory turned culture center \/ space for artistic creation across multiple disciplines. One of 11 sites throughout Barcelona, Fabra is owned by the City Council intending the site solely for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21348,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21348"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}